Network-enabled SCSI, or iSCSI

[Janak Parekh]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.com.com/2100-1001-984320.html?tag=fd_top' target='_blank'>http://news.com.com/2100-1001-98432...html?tag=fd_top</a><br /><br /></div>This is an interesting technology -- hard-disk like protocols over a network? This might be interesting long-term ramifications for storage -- I could envision iSCSI over WLAN, enabling handheld devices to access storage in a much more convenient fashion than a physical connection. However, I think it's intended for large storage networks right now.<br /><br />"A key standards body has given its blessing for a new technology that allows storage area networks to be built using existing Ethernet networking.<br /><br />Late Tuesday, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) approved the iSCSI standard. SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) is a widely used standard for connecting hard drives to computers; iSCSI lets that happen over a network connection such as a company Ethernet network or even the Internet. iSCSI holds the promise of letting multiple computers tap into a pool of storage systems."

[Ravenswing]

Just think about that for a second would you?

iSCSI (which isn't very new, I believe) lets you address storage over a network. Let's see now that would be just like... NetBIOS! NFS!

The computer industry is so good at reinventing the wheel once every three seconds I don't know why we haven't disappeared up our own behinds. :roll:

[rlobrecht]

Let's see now that would be just like... NetBIOS! NFS!


Not exactly. We have a fibre channel based SAN at work. We use Brocade fibre switches connected to Sun servers. We are testing a Cisco iSCSI switch with the hopes that we can also give Windows servers access to the TBs of disk space we have on the SAN. The SAN drives appear local to the server, unlike NetBIOS or NFS. Oracle and SQL Server will happily store their datafiles on the SAN disks (you can't do this on Windows with NetBIOS.) The performance with GB ethernet is on par with locally attached SCSI drives.

[jmulder]

iSCSI is really cool!!

Our company uses an early implementation of iSCSI on our Network Appliance Filer (Network Attached Storage). We can use the NAS as shared disks for server clusters, at a substantially lower cost than buying the special hardware for each cluster. Granted, the Filer cost us about $100K, but we've already got 6 clusters on it (in addition to the normal file shares), and we can add more any time we want.

[jbctech]

Let's see now that would be just like... NetBIOS! NFS!


Not exactly. We have a fibre channel based SAN at work. We use Brocade fibre switches connected to Sun servers. We are testing a Cisco iSCSI switch with the hopes that we can also give Windows servers access to the TBs of disk space we have on the SAN. The SAN drives appear local to the server, unlike NetBIOS or NFS. Oracle and SQL Server will happily store their datafiles on the SAN disks (you can't do this on Windows with NetBIOS.) The performance with GB ethernet is on par with locally attached SCSI drives.

Which also means it is possible to boot off of the storage device. I too have seen a lot of the iSCSI stuff here, and unfortunately, it's confidential, but there is a lot of cool stuff to be coming soon. As rlobrecht knows, it is definitely different from NetBIOS or NFS.

James
IBM Tucson

[shiok]

There is a similar technology called HyperSCSI that is supposedly faster than iSCSI. According to the HyperSCSI press release, iSCSI encapsulates SCSI commands in TCP/IP packets, whereas HyperSCSI encapsulates SCSI commands in raw ethernet frames, so it does not have to go through the TCP/IP stack, thereby enhancing performance.

Check out their official website at:
http://nst.dsi.a-star.edu.sg/mcsa/hyperscsi/